At seventeen, I got my driver's license. I graduated high school. I met Danik. It is now seventeen years since Mama is gone. Time is fleeting and relative. Many things happened in the first seventeen years of my life and many more in the last seventeen. We buried Mom by noon on a Tuesday. Looking back, I still don't know how it was all possible, a mix of adrenaline, profound grief and the willingness to do the right thing by Jewish law to give her soul the peace it deserved. I remember all of it...most of it. Some images are more vivid than others, some days more pronounced and some have shifted in perhaps years, not dates. The constant is always Mama's love, warmth and the incredible selflessness with which she fought this awful illness for seventeen years.

At seventeen, Mama, a Jewish girl from Ukraine, ended up at the Saint Petersburg State Institute of Culture, by way of Chelyabinsk. She was always determined, headstrong and ahead of her time. She wasn't a straight-A student, except in literature, but she absorbed everything around her. During those years, she watched every play, saw every exhibit and made friendships that lasted a lifetime. She learned how to shop, too. She would buy a pair of gloves and my grandmother would sew her a coat to match. She always had a keen eye for beauty (and a good bargain).

That instinct followed her into her career and her life. There was a "line" to buy the boots she had just purchased; a “forbidden” book that she couldn't stop raving about; or a new perfume that someone “smuggled” from overseas. She was a young woman when she was first diagnosed, a little younger than I am now, full of life and dreams and ideas about how to make a life in this new country, raise her only daughter, make new friends and build a warm home. Unfortunately, Hashem had other plans. In 1996, following her arduous journey of surgery, chemo, radiation and a bone marrow transplant, her cancer went into remission. She went to Israel. She spent time with family and friends and came back re-energized with an incredible zest for life. My parents both began working permanently instead of odd jobs and a few years later they saved up for their condo. They raised me and while we lived modestly, I never felt myself lacking.

My mom dragged me on tours, to museums, theater; but I made myself a promise that I couldn't break. At about twelve years old in an emergency room at 3 am when I finally found out what was wrong with Mama, I promised myself that my parents would have no need to worry about me. I didn't understand then that they'd be worried regardless. I didn't understand either the breadth and depth of their love or the wisdom that I so desperately needed. I carried on. I was a good kid (with a few rare exceptions).

Seventeen years later, I understand more of what I couldn’t understand then. How much she protected me. How much she carried. How much of the life I have built came from watching her fight so hard for hers (and mine). I wish I asked for advice more often. I called every day. Seventeen years later, there are still so many things I want to ask her. So many things I want to tell her. So many occasions where she should have been celebrating and celebrated. Her grandkids growing up without knowing her thirst for life, for books, for the arts and for all things beautiful, not just aesthetically, but from the inside out. Growing up without her love, her borscht and golubtsi, her vzblyabknutiy biskvit; without her fitting aphorism for every occasion; without her sense of self and her incredible ability to make others feel seen and understood.

Time has moved forward, as it does. The sun keeps rising. It rains and it snows. Seasons change, but somehow Mama has remained present in all of it; in the way I raise my children, the way I build my home, the way I treasure my friendships, the way I love and the way I worry.

Seventeen years is a lifetime, and somehow no time at all.

I love you, Mom, wherever your soul may roam. Always.

Seventy Five

It would have been a big, beautiful party. The kind you always loved, the one that would add to all of our April festivities and chaos. Friends and family would fill the room, music playing, laughter that lingers, and flowers everywhere. So many flowers. There would be calls and cards from all over the world.  You would have taken it all in with that smile, quietly making sure everyone else felt special, never talking about your pain, but asking about everyone’s kids and grandkids, their health results and the latest in books, movies and theater. You would even bake something, just for us, just because. 

But you didn’t get to grow old. You didn’t get the small, ordinary moments that come with it - the little complaints, the misplaced glasses, the calls asking for me for help with your iPhone for the 10th time that would surely drive me crazy. You didn’t get to watch me grow into this life, with all its ups and downs. For you and in some way for me, I’m still 25.

You never met your grandkids. They are kind of awesome, on most days. I see glimpses of you in them sometimes, and it stops me for a second. Sometimes they ask about you and sometimes they say things that could only come from you. I wish they knew you. I wish they felt your arms around them (especially Leor that hates to hug), your warmth, your steady love. I wish they got to experience books with you, and theater and your borscht. It’s the kind of love and taste that stays with you long after. 

The last big party we had was your 50th. The night Danik and I met. Twenty five years have passed since then, somehow both fast and impossibly slow. This is the sixteenth birthday we’re marking without you, and instead of getting easier, the space you left just feels bigger.

I don’t want to stop time. I just wish you were here in it with us, still loving, still guiding, still making borscht, still on the other end of the line when I call. I wish you were part of every moment and every celebration that matters, especially your own and every inconsequential one in between, that we take so easily for granted.

HBD Mamochka, wherever your soul may roam.